What does CBS stand for?

Some would say that the C stands for Complete and we all know what BS stands for. There's nothing I can add to the Instapundit roundup. The Kerry Spot, now dubbed "TKS" has more as does Hugh Hewitt.

I'm not all that interested in this, since I didn't expect this investigation to really address what's wrong with MSM in general, of which the "Fake, but Accurate" episode is just another symptom. Maybe CBS should change its name to FBA.

Update: Hindrocket at Power Line Blog has an excellent analysis of details in the report which show plainly that the story on Bush's national guard service was politically driven to answer the Swift Boat Vets' book and ads. They show a clear urgency to put the report out in time to influence the election. Power Line also points out the questionable absence of emails that, one must suspect, prove the point more conclusively.

Charles Johnson temporarily posting at another blogsite also notes the short schrift the report gives to bloggers who are dismissed as having "a conservative agenda." Funny, there's a finding that the "liberal political agenda" of CBS and the individuals involved was unproven. EVERYBODY has some agenda, so they don't need to point it out as if it were something dirty. Bloggers don't go around trumpeting their objectivity and purity in delivering the whole truth. That is supposed to be the agenda of all news media, but clearly it wasn't at CBS.

Hugh Hewitt is pounding away at the report making the point that it is a whitewash of CBS and Rather. Well, duh! Did anybody really expect anything different? Hugh is irate that many bloggers have responded with pleasant surprise that the report is more hardhitting than they expected. Les Moonves, president of CBS, has proclaimed:

We are also gratified that the Panel, after extensive analysis and consideration, has found that, while CBS News made numerous errors of judgment and execution in this story, these mistakes were not motivated by any political agenda. As the Report states, 'The Panel does not find a basis to accuse those who investigated, produced, vetted or aired the Segment of having a political bias.'

This is an astonishing conclusion given the specific evidence included in the report, but bloggers are not letting them get away with this. The political agenda is clear from the emails cited and the failure of the panel to inquire into the fact that the memos were falsified.

In short, if you want news, the media can only be trusted in conjunction with factchecking by bloggers whose agenda is doing just that, documenting the bias and misleading reporting of the MSM. To me that's old news, but this is just another instance of the phenomenon we've witnessed so many times in the past. It's as predictable as Michael Moore's distortions.

More: I loved this comment on Jay Rosen's blog:

Well, at least we now know that Mr. Moonves doesn't believe that Mr. Rather is responsible for what he reads on the air, or says in interviews

Also this comment from Patterico.